Probably not many of us. In fact, with the way the world is going these days, you’d probably have a hard time determining whether what you read or were told was intended as a funny joke, as more of that “fake news” we’ve been hearing about, planted or leaked to advance some political agenda or another, or as a honest statement about something that has really happened. Part of the fun of a good prank or hoax is playing on the hoaxed party’s credulity, and picking your target to avoid the inherent skeptic and instead trick the hopelessly naive among us. But who can truly be deemed naive, or skeptical, about what has or has not happened in the weird reality we now find ourselves in?

Think about it: if someone told you that the President had tweeted something outrageous, how could you possibly evaluate whether it was true or not without checking? If you accepted what you were told at face value, would it be because you were a gullible “April fool” or because, in reality, the President has tweeted a series of ill-advised and intemperate things and these days just about anything could come out of his mouth? In fact, is there anything that any one of our current political leaders, Democrat or Republican, could purportedly say or do, about Russians or surveillance or climate change or leaked diplomatic communications or any other of the prevailing topics of the day, that are so inherently unbelievable that your fakery senses should start tingling?

When reality itself is so bizarre that any statement about an actual event could be considered a prank, and vice versa, April Fool’s Day isn’t quite so much fun anymore.